Browse by Tags

I have four Surfaces: the original RT, Surface 2 RT, Surface Pro, and Surface 3. When I got the original Surface RT, which Microsoft gave to every full time employee shortly after it came out, I bought the Type keyboard and stopped using my iPad. The device was sluggish, though, particularly with Outlook...

This past week was the tenth anniversary of blogging here. Over that time I’ve written 560 blog posts. There’s clearly been a drop in my blogging frequency, unfortunately, in recent years. I’ve spent more time interacting with folks on Twitter over the last couple of years than on blogging...

I had gotten a Windows 8 upgrade key with the purchase of a computer last summer. I hadn’t used it, so I wanted to upgrade a desktop my family uses. I ran the utility WindowsSetupBox.exe that you can download from the Upgrade Windows with only a product key page. However, it failed quickly after choosing...

Okay, so this has nothing to do with ALM, but I really like the Bing desktop app for one feature: It sets the desktop background to the Bing image of the day. I used to run this app on Win7 and had missed it since moving to Win8 (I love Win8 and have it running on all my machines). Before the recent...

If you are using Outlook 2010 Beta, you probably need this fix because all of your emails are huge. It was killing me (and a bunch of other folks internally). It is fixed in the recent RC, but most people don’t have access (it’s not a public RC). The Office team has just posted a fix...

More than a year ago, I posted a reference to Jeff Atwood's post on extending the evaluation period for Windows Vista.
KB article 948472 describes the process for Windows Server 2008 and includes instructions on installing an evaluation version of Windows Server 2008 from the standard media as well...

If you use Outlook 2007 and SharePoint, you really need to read this. I've been using this feature for the last couple of weeks. It syncs the documents into Outlook so they are available offline, you can search them, and you can edit and upload when you get back online. It's really slick. Read the post...

The first version of Windows Live Writer is now available. I've been using the betas for a long time, and I think it's a great application (and it's free). I use it to write all of my blog posts. If it weren't for Live Writer, I wouldn't have written nearly so many blog posts. Windows Live Writer: Out...

This was a 200-year old Osage-orange tree on what used to be part of my grandfather's farm in Charlotte, NC. This former hay field is now a subdivision (the farm house is directly across the road in the grove of trees in the distance behind the scraper). The house I grew up in is adjacent to the farm...

Since I've started using Outlook 2007 to manage my RSS feeds, I've wanted to have all of the posts show up in a folder, much like new mail shows in up the inbox. I don't like have to scroll through the list of folders and visit each one containing an unread post. It's just too tedious unless you have...

According to the following Microsoft web page, you can get a complimentary VS 2005 Standard Edition by attending "labcasts." You'll have to go to the web page and read the rules, etc. I thought I'd pass this along, since I stumbled across it tonight. The Mouse is Mightier than the Sword Defy All Challenges...

Lorenzo Barbieri , an MVP, pointed out the Orcas splash screen spec that's been posted. I'm guessing that's one of those things that leads to people believing we have an infinite supply of people to develop products, leading to comments like, "I can't believe you still can't do X!" X is everything from...

Jeff Atwood has written a post on how to extend the Vista grace period to 120 days. It turns out that you can extend it three times for 30 days each, giving you up to 120 days when you count the original 30-day grace period. It seems like a great way to try out Vista Ultimate to see if it's worth the...

Shortly after I wrote about Remote Desktop Connection 6.0 client , Blake Handler sent me email about a CodePlex project called Terminals . Terminals is a neat application that hosts RDC sessions in tabs. One of the options in the Terminals connection dialog is whether to connect to the console, which...

Last month, the Remote Desktop Connection 6.0 client was released. It has some nice new features in it, which I've listed below. Being able to log into a machine on a private network without having to use a VPN sounds really cool (TS Gateway servers), but I haven't been able to try that out. I found...

Martin Woodward tagged me with that blogging game that's going around where you post five things that people don't generally know about you and then tag five more people. Okay, I have to admit it seems kind of fun, so I'll do my part to keep it going. I wrote firmware for electricity meters at Elster...

Microsoft TechNet put them all in one convenient download. Sysinternals Suite Published: November 1, 2006 Introduction The entire set of Sysinternals Utilities have been rolled up into a single Suite of tools. This file contains all the individual tools and help files. Download SysinternalsSuite (8 MB...

I've written before about putting files directly into Outlook to make them securely available at work and at home. Part of the reason for that is to have documents that just contain my thoughts on changes we should make, features we should consider, and so on. Those are the kinds of things that would...

I tried using an RSS aggregator, but it didn't fit the way that I wanted to work. All of the feeds are trapped on the machine running the aggregator. I wanted to be able to get to them from work and home. Web-based aggregators solve that issue but still fell flat for me because I never remembered to...

About a month ago, I wrote about using Outlook with RPC over HTTP . I recently stumbled across an old blog post by Jeremy Kelly called Using your Mailbox to Store Work-in-Progress documents . He mentions a feature called "free docs." Combining this with Outlook over HTTP is really very useful. Here's...

Not too long ago, I finally got around to configuring Outlook to use RPC over HTTP on my laptop and my desktop at home so that I can get to my work email more conveniently. I love this feature and wish I had done it a lot sooner. Outlook Web Access is great for places where you don't have your own computer...

The News & Observer wrote an article about Brian, Craig, and our office.
Microsoft to expand small Durham office
DURHAM -- Brian Harry jokes that he called Microsoft the evil empire before it was popular to do so.
"I only ever worked for start-ups, and in those days, I viewed it as a...

Tim , who worked on IE among other things in his career at Microsoft and now works on Hatteras, showed me tonight that you can set the home page in Internet Explorer by dragging the link from the Address bar to the Home icon on the toolbar. I had no idea. I burst out laughing. It's a neat trick once...